President Visits Inundated Eastern Iowa

IOWA CITY, June 19 -- President Bush helicoptered over a water-soaked stretch of eastern Iowa on Thursday, swooping low in Marine One to inspect a burst dam, collapsed bridges and saturated buildings here before landing to offer sympathy to residents struggling to cope with severe flooding that has displaced thousands.

"The good news is the people in Iowa are tough-minded people," Bush said at a briefing with state and local officials in Cedar Rapids. "You'll come back better. Sometimes it's hard to see when you're this close to the deal."

Federal disaster officials said the repercussions from the flooding across states present their biggest challenge since Hurricane Katrina, the 2005 disaster that, for many, placed a hard-to-shake stamp of incompetence on the Bush administration. They said they have learned a host of lessons, as simple as the need to share responsibility for the distribution of water among several agencies or to create mobile recovery centers for people who cannot travel to existing centers.

Since Katrina, Bush has also been alert to the public relations dimensions of disaster response, making an array of visits to the victims of wildfire, tornadoes, flooding and -- in Minneapolis last year -- bridge collapse.

The recent flooding has also brought out the contenders to succeed Bush. Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, toured southeastern Iowa on Thursday, though he did not cross paths with the president. Sen. Barack Obama, who presumably will be the Democrats' nominee, was in flood-threatened Quincy, Ill., last weekend.

Today's three-hour visit by Bush, which included stops at a Red Cross shelter and a washed-out middle-class neighborhood near the University of Iowa, seemed to lack the emotional resonance of those previous trips, with much of his interaction with ordinary Iowans out of view of reporters. He spent much of his time in the company of elected officials, discussing the extent of the damage with Gov. Chet Culver (D) as they flew between Cedar Rapids and Iowa City, two of the hardest-hit cities.

Still, some of those who met the president seemed grateful for his presence. "I think this shows that he's a man of conscience and he cares a lot about what's happening in the United States and here in the Midwest," said Katherine Habley, a librarian who took a break from reading to children at a shelter.

The reaction to the broader federal response has been more mixed. Residents of Cedar Rapids and other cities and towns through the Midwest have offered generally high praise for the efforts of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the National Guard and the Army Corps of Engineers.

But some Cedar Rapids residents were frustrated and angry at what they saw as a lengthy and confusing process to get a small amount of FEMA assistance.

"The federal response is nonexistent," said Frank Bruce, 59, who was rescued from his home "at the last minute" by a fire department boat after he refused to board a FEMA boat that would not also take his two dogs. "I'm about to put a sign out saying 'Louisiana North.' "

Vince Clark, a FEMA official, said the agency has more than 500 staffers in Iowa and is often made a whipping boy for people who do not understand its role. "People get the misconception that FEMA comes in and does everything," he said. But federal legislation sets a limit on what FEMA can give out, he said, and the agency becomes involved only at the invitation of the state.

Traveling with Bush on Thursday was Clark's boss, FEMA Director R. David Paulison, who told reporters that 24 people have been killed, mostly in Iowa, and about 35,000 displaced from their homes since the flooding and severe weather began in late May. But only a tiny percentage of those displaced are living in government-sponsored shelters, suggesting that they have been taken in by friends and family, FEMA officials said. "We've got folks taking care of each other," said David Garratt, a FEMA official.

Meanwhile, the flooding has spread to five other states, and Paulison said the agency has delivered 2 million sandbags and 180,000 liters of water to Missouri.

Paulison said that it is hard to estimate the cost of dealing with the disaster but that $4 billion in an existing disaster-relief fund should be "more than enough" for contingencies. But Congress is moving to provide an additional $2.65 billion to help replenish this fund and to provide other support. The House passed the measure Thursday as part of its war funding package.

Standing next to a flooded intersection in Iowa City, Bush vowed that help will be on the way to rebuild devastated communities: "Tell people that oftentimes, you get dealt a hand you didn't expect to have to play, and the question is not whether you're going to get dealt the hand -- the question is: How do you play it? And I'm confident the people of Iowa will play it really well."

Staff writers Kari Lydersen in Cedar Rapids and Dan Eggen and Spencer S. Hsu in Washington contributed to this report.